Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcsun!inria!ircam!mf
From: mf@ircam.fr (Michel Fingerhut)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.ultrix
Subject: rdist'ing files
Message-ID: <1990Oct27.094317.23715@ircam.ircam.fr>
Date: 27 Oct 90 09:43:17 GMT
Sender: mf@ircam.ircam.fr (Michel Fingerhut)
Organization: IRCAM, Paris (France)
Lines: 25

In our lil' DEC sub-universe, I rdist files which I believe should
be identical on all these planets--e.g., termcap, gettytab, and whatever.
I recently noticed that /etc/gettytab was distributed from time to time,
while it never appeared to have been modified--I keep it under SCCS,
it's read only and its contents have not changed: but it has obviously
been touched, and that triggered the rdist.

Well, I finally found what happened: /etc/rc.local EDITS this file every
time the machine is rebooted and puts into it the current ULTRIX version
number (which changes much less often than the number of reboots, on such
systems as ours at least).

I knew that motd is thus handled by /etc/rc on most systems and that's fine,
since it's a file which is supposed to change.  Oh well...

Incidentally, is the header of /etc/gettytab indicative of the way Unix was
converted to Ultrix  (%s/ni/ltri/g)?

	#       @(#)gettytab    4.1.1.4 (ULTRIX)        11/18/88
	#       Based on 4.2bsd labelled: 4.7 (Berkeley) 85/02/05

	# Most of the table entries here are just copies of the
	# old getty table, it is by no means certain, or even likely,
	# then any of them are optimal for any purpose whatever.
	# Nor is it likely that more than a couple are even correct